This invention relates to a data recording/reproducing method and apparatus for recording speech or video data on a recording medium, to which random access can be had, such as a hard disc, and for reproducing the recorded data.
Recently, a random-accessible hard disc array device, composed of a large number of large-capacity hard disc devices and having a recording capacity of tens to hundreds of gigabytes (GB), has been put to practical use.
This hard disc array device is suited for recording speech data and/or video data of an extremely large data volume. In particular, the hard disc array device is superior as a recording/reproducing apparatus for an editing device because of its characteristics of reproducing given speech/video data in a short access time.
Meanwhile, the video data and the speech data are collectively recorded on the recording medium. If data is managed on the file basis, the video data and the speech data are handled as a set, so that the video data and the speech data cannot be handled separately from each other without difficulties.
The result is such defects that the number of channels of the speech data cannot be modified on the file basis partway, that the files of speech data with different number of channels cannot be made to co-exist and hence the number of speech channels has to be matched to the maximum number thus producing loss in the recording medium, that a recording area for images and the maximum number of the speech channels has to be used for data composed only of speech or data composed only of images, thus wasting the recording medium, and that the image only or optional speech channels only cannot be changed.